Alone in the Dork
by Valois
Summary: Callisto and Joxer play musical bodies.
1. Chapter 1

-=-=-

CHAPTER 1

-=-=-

"I'm bored." It was the frustrated exhalation of a spoiled brat, and spoke volumes about the calloused warrior that uttered it. "Nothing interesting ever happens here."

"Why don't you die? That might be interesting." Callisto did her best to ignore Sovereign's restless twitching, focusing instead on the contraption of wooden poles in her hands. At least he wasn't tapping. She hated the tapping.

What she had heard of Hercules's escape from the place between worlds, recounted by Sovereign with lots of vague hand gestures, had involved the use of these wooden poles to create some kind of key to open a vortex leading back into her world. She jammed the largest pole into a crevice between the rocks at the top of the cliff, turning it this way and that, keeping her eyes on the sky.

Lightning flashed in the distance, followed several moments later by a deep rumble of thunder.

Sovereign chuckled. "Sounds like Zeus has indigestion." He frowned, annoyed that Callisto seemed to find the wooden poles engrossing, if not enjoyable. "Why haven't you found a way out yet?"

"Why don't you help me instead of sitting on your ass and bitching all day?"

Sovereign belched loudly and scratched his crotch. "Nah. Too much work."

Callisto contemplated breaking Sovereign's neck, but as much as she hated to admit it, endlessly aggravating company was better than no company.

"This is so boring!"

Callisto sighed in profound irritation. "You'd figure that since Hercules is such an infernal goody-two-shoes, being stuck in the place between worlds with his complete opposite would be—entertaining—to say the least."

Sovereign leered at her. "If you're bored, we could always play house. You could be the screen door and I'd slam you all night long, baby." He absentmindedly drummed his fingers on the ground, tapping his fingernails against the hard stone.

Callisto pinched the bridge of her nose. "As tempting as it sounds, I'm afraid I'm going to have to KICK YOUR FUCKING ASS!"

She somersaulted into the air, jackknifing as she descended to kick him squarely in the balls. Sovereign doubled over in pain, affording her the chance to scratch his eyes out with her fingernails.

He socked her in the gut, grabbing her in a headlock on the way down. Callisto elbowed him in the kidneys as he punched her head repeatedly.

A deafening thunderclap reverberated on the jagged rocks as lightning struck the key. A shimmering blue vortex appeared in the sky, sucking everything unsecured into its swirling depths.

"It worked!" Callisto exclaimed, worming out of Sovereign's stranglehold. She launched herself at the vortex, already anticipating the look, the smell, the feel of her own world, the rush of adrenaline as she slit Xena's throat from ear to ear…

She was brought unpleasantly back to the present by Sovereign, who grabbed her firmly by the ankles. "Nice try, bitch!"

Callisto struggled to free herself from his grasp to no avail. Sovereign dug in his heels and held on tight despite the awesome pull of the vortex. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, feeling as if she would be torn in two if something didn't give.

A horrible wrenching sensation wracked her very soul. Opening her eyes, Callisto saw her own body below her and realized that somehow, her consciousness and her physical self had become separated…

The vortex collapsed in on itself and vanished with a bang.

-=-=-

She was floating in the clouds, high above the earth. She could see a forest below her, patchwork-quilt fields, little towns the size of a child's building blocks. Shimmering liquid silver threads marked streams, and a river.

From her aerial vantage point, she could just make out four dots moving towards the forest, as tiny as ants. Their voices were a distant twitter on the very edge of her hearing. She began to descend, a shred of latent humanity buried in her consciousness desperate to confirm that evolution didn't stop with the Neanderthal that was Sovereign.

As the ants passed under the eaves of the forest, she heard an "oof!" followed by a crash.

"It's bad enough that you trip over your own feet, Joxer. You don't have to trip over mine as well!" a whiny voice complained.

There was a muffled "sorry," sounding as if spoken through several inches of leaf litter.

Descending farther, Callisto saw a blonde girl haul herself to her feet with a stick bigger than she was. The largest ant, now horse-shaped, pranced skittishly in place.

"I think I sprained something," mumbled a pile of leaves.

A voice like steel wrapped in silk sliced through the air. "Go on ahead, Gabrielle. Find a place to camp for the night by the river. We'll catch up." Strong hands reached into the leaves to haul out a figure built entirely of elbows and knees.

Gabrielle took Argo by the reins and led her into the forest, headed for a thin silver ribbon a few miles away. Callisto sailed effortlessly through the trees, trailing after her. The horse, sensing her presence, shied away from every bird's chirp and rustle of foliage.

"What's the matter, Argo?" Gabrielle stroked the horse's neck, trying to read the warning in Argo's panicky eyes. "You're so jumpy all of a sudden."

Quite out of the blue, another woman's voice issued from Gabrielle's mouth.

"Do you often hold conversations with dumb animals?" the voice asked.

Shrugging, Gabrielle decided to answer herself. "No…"

"I was talking to the horse."

Gabrielle's limbs moved seemingly of their own accord, flopping to and fro like a marionette with several strings missing. "Stop that!" Gabrielle ordered.

"No. It's fun," answered the voice. Gabrielle spun around crazily and ran headlong into a tree.

"You made me do that, didn't you?" Gabrielle accused the leaves fluttering overhead. "You're controlling me like I'm some sort of puppet!"

_Duh._ The voice answered her in her own head, satisfied that Gabrielle's vocal cords were under control. Gabrielle bounced to her feet and tottered unsteadily towards Argo, twirling her staff dangerously in her hand. _Here horsey, horsey, horsey!_

Argo took off like a shot through the forest. Gabrielle's shoulders shrugged of their own accord.

_What's with the stick, anyway?_

"It's a staff. It's my weapon," explained Gabrielle, affronted.

_It's kindling._ The staff broke over her knee.

Gabrielle screwed up her features, squeezing her eyes shut and clenching her jaw.

_Are you trying to tell me that nature is calling?_

"No, I'm trying to force you out!"

Laughter rung out in her head. _Nice try, little girl. It'll take more than that to get rid of me._ To prove her point, Callisto ran Gabrielle up a tree, somersaulted her through the air, and finished it all off with a triumphant jig.

Gabrielle collapsed to the ground, exhausted. "What do you want with me?"

_I'm going to use you to kill Xena._ The flush of fear and anxiety coursing through Gabrielle's veins felt like the bubbles in champagne to Callisto. _I wonder if she'll die quietly or scream like a girl—I mean Perdicus._

Gabrielle's barely contained rage boiled over. Callisto felt what control she had slipping away through Gabrielle's fingers.

Gabrielle seized half of her broken staff and pounded her forehead with it. "Get… out… of… my… head!"

Callisto was unceremoniously ejected from Gabrielle's mind in a rush of fury. She found herself floating once more, disconnected, insubstantial as the wind.

A soft snap of twigs announced the presence of the warrior princess. Torn between concern and curiosity, Xena stood a little ways away, watching her friend beat herself senseless with her own staff. "Gabrielle? Are you all right?"

If Callisto had a body of her own, her face would have displayed a close contender for the biggest shit-eating grin in the world. She slid into the skull of her mortal enemy and made herself at home.

_Get out._ The words were little cubes of solid ice in her mind.

_Aw, Xena, aren't you happy to see me? Figuratively speaking, of course._

"It's Callisto," Gabrielle panted, mildly concussed. "I don't know how, but she was in my head, talking to me! She wanted me to kill you!"

"Fancy that."

_Fancy indeed. Would you look at all these little secrets and bottled up emotions?_

_Leave those alone._

_Make me._

Anguish and remorse flooded Xena's mind. Tears as fresh as those she shed on the day she abandoned Solan cascaded down her face.

Callisto felt Xena struggling against her, mentally as well as physically. Xena anticipated a blow to the head with the hilt of her sword and ducked out of the way just in time.

Another internal button was pushed and pictures of Gabrielle being ripped limb from limb by bloodthirsty Bacchae danced before Xena's eyes.

This time Xena wasn't quite ready. Callisto took the chakram from her belt and used Xena's hand to press it tightly against her throat, choking her with it as she slowly sliced through the skin of her neck. Callisto's grip on the chakram slipped as Xena began to suffocate. She cried aloud with Xena's voice in frustration, struggling against both Xena's weakening body and Xena herself.

Xena's thoughts pierced their shared mind. _Don't you get it? If you kill me while you're inside of me, you die too._

Callisto pondered this for all of half a second. _It's worth it._

Xena's head slammed repeatedly into a chunk of granite protruding from the forest floor. Throwing herself at her friend, Gabrielle caught Xena's head in her hands, preventing Callisto from bloodying it any further. Xena's hands released the chakram and wrapped themselves around Gabrielle's neck instead.

Gabrielle straddled Xena with her knees on her friend's chest, straining to release Callisto's grip on her throat. Callisto responded by pulling Gabrielle's face closer to Xena's to better bite off her nose. The pushing and pulling between the two women and one demented disembodied goddess produced a mad see-saw motion, their combined grunts and squeals of aggravation drowning out the sounds of the forest.

The crunch of brushwood underfoot signaled an arrival. They looked up as one just in time to see Joxer's mesmerized face smack into a tree branch. He tried to laugh it off, rubbing his forehead in pain. "Didn't see that there. Guess my mind must have been somewhere… else…"

Xena used Callisto's split-second of distraction to squeeze her out of her mind like a watermelon seed.

"Um, sorry for interrupting… I, uh… I…" Joxer gave up on apologizing after a few attempts and frankly stared.

"She's gone," Xena croaked from under the weight of Gabrielle's body. Relieved, Gabrielle stood up to dust herself off, giving Joxer a hearty glare in the process. "You can re-attach your jaw now, Joxer," Xena said, massaging the cut on her throat.

_Bitch._ Callisto muttered curses to herself as she rose freely into the air. Both Xena and Gabrielle had grown wise to her little scheme, and furthermore had figured out how to expel her from their minds. There was only one option left, really.

The intended victim swallowed nervously and headed a little ways off into the forest to give his companions some privacy, trying his hardest not to smack into anything else.


	2. Chapter 2

-=-=-

CHAPTER 2

-=-=-

_Should've gone for Argo._ Already, Joxer had tripped over his own feet twice, crashed into five trees, three boulders, and a stray goat, nearly garrotted himself with his own belt, and fallen over for no apparent reason an astonishing sixteen times. And Callisto hadn't even been trying to control his movements at all. She snorted derisively. _Maybe it would do him some good._

Joxer looked around in confusion. Xena and Gabrielle continued on ahead as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

"Am I the only who hears that?" he muttered to himself.

Callisto had been playing it cool for the past few hours while she waited for a convenient moment to re-acquaint Xena with her old pal Hades. If Xena grew wise to her presence in Joxer's head, she'd surely run him through and then Callisto would be shit out of luck. _Except for horsey._

Argo shied away from Joxer and whinnied nervously, as if reading Callisto's thoughts.

Callisto forced Joxer to stop and re-lace his boots as a preventative measure against the inevitable. Ahead, Xena and Gabrielle paused as they reached a log bridge spanning a wide, swiftly flowing river.

"It looks deep," commented Gabrielle, trying to see through the muddy water to the bottom.

In a flash, Callisto seized control of Joxer's legs, propelling him forward, head down, smack into Xena's rear. Xena screamed as she slipped off the bridge into the river, her cry cutting off abruptly when she landed in ankle-deep water. She glared at Joxer.

He coughed. "Killer bee. Headed straight for you. No need to thank me."

Callisto was impressed—Joxer had come up with that on his own. Years of having to think up excuses on the spot to cover random acts of idiocy had evidently made it somewhat of a reflex.

Xena and Gabrielle cast identical suspicious sidelong glances at him. _They're beginning to suspect._

"Suspect what?" Joxer hazarded in a barely audible whisper.

_How manly and courageous you are—erm, I am._ Callisto unconsciously gritted Joxer's teeth.

"Who are you and what are you doing in my head?"

_Shit._ Callisto rallied. _I'm Terminyx, the Goddess of Insect Repellent, come to protect you from evil killer bees._

Incredibly, Joxer seemed to buy this. "Do you do spiders, too?"

_What?_

"Once, I fell asleep under a spiderweb and woke up with dead flies stuck to my face. It really grossed me out, and ever since—wah!" The path quite rudely rose up to smack Joxer in the face.

_That's it—I'm driving now!_ Callisto seized Joxer's muscles, forcing them to cooperate instead of battling each other with every step. His uncharacteristically smooth, fluid movement drew awed stares from Xena, Gabrielle, and Horsey until Joxer staged a revolt in his left ankle and purposely tripped himself up. Xena and Gabrielle shrugged and resumed walking.

The tighter Callisto tried to control his movements, the harder Joxer fought. He careened back and forth across the path like a man in a body cast being attacked by fire ants.

Gabrielle watched as he got tangled in a vine and fell flat on his ass. She turned to Xena, chuckling. "You know, for a second there I was worried that Callisto had taken over Joxer's body, too."

"Calli—?!" Joxer managed to exclaim before Callisto rammed the hilt of his sword into his throat.

She felt the beginnings of anger crawl out of the primordial ooze of his mind and beach itself on the shores of wrath. It dawned on Callisto that if she made him angry enough, he'd force her out just like Xena and Gabrielle did. She abruptly relaxed control, sending Joxer flying down the path like an overstretched rubber band.

Xena extended a hand to help him up. "Are you okay?"

Callisto maintained an iron grip on Joxer's vocal cords. "Fine," he grunted.

Joxer staggered to his feet, his anger subsiding somewhat as he regained control of his limbs. Seeing half of the broken staff sticking out of Gabrielle's pack, he grabbed it in an attempt to beat Callisto out of his head.

"Give that back!" Gabrielle ordered.

Joxer struggled to tell her what was going on inside his head, but Callisto wouldn't let him. Gabrielle unsuccessfully tried to pry his fingers from the broken staff as he continued to bash it into his skull. Experimenting with a new tactic, Gabrielle began to smack him in the head with the staff, reasoning that she'd get it back when he was unconscious. Xena stayed well out of their way until Joxer decided he needed a bigger bludgeon and went for her sword.

Callisto folded her arms, figuratively speaking, and watched with glee as they beat each other senseless, keeping alert for any opportunity to stab Xena with something sharp.

As luck wouldn't have it, none appeared. Xena ended the scuffle by hog-tying Joxer and throwing him over Argo's back. They reached the outskirts of a small town with no further mishaps.

"I think we all need a break from each other. Why don't we split up and meet tonight at the tavern?" Xena suggested.

"Bye," Gabrielle seconded, heading off to the market.

Xena untied Joxer, leaving him alone with Callisto as she went to find a stable for Argo.

-=-=-

She had thought Sovereign was intolerable, but nothing, not even the tapping, compared to the little peep show Joxer had running through his head twenty-four/seven. The main feature, inspired by recent events, involved Xena and Gabrielle and very little in the way of clothes. Occasionally, depending on his mood, it also included olive oil, mud, or gelatin.

_That's disgusting._

"If you don't like it, you can always leave," Joxer addressed a flower cart in the town marketplace.

Callisto smiled inwardly at the bystanders' reaction. _You know, most people don't answer the voices in their heads out loud._

"Oh." Joxer glanced nervously around at the staring faces. I mean, oh. "What do you want with Xena anyway?" he whispered under his breath.

Callisto picked up a few things as they passed a kitchen-wares stall. _I want to apologize for all the nasty things I've done to her over the years._

Joxer looked down at the implement in his hand. "With a meat cleaver?" Something posing as understanding dawned. "Wait, you're not, like, into all that kinky M&M bondage and stuff, are you?"

_That's S&M._

"I knew it!" A mischevious glint lit up his face. "You think there's any chance, like after you apologize to Xena, we could um, you know, with her and Gabrielle and you coaching me…" He accompanied this request with a variety of graphic hand gestures.

Joxer's shoulders shuddered with the force of Callisto's revulsion. She would kill him this instant if she wouldn't die along with him or would at least ditch him if she had another means of keeping close to Xena. Callisto reflexively steered him away from collision with a precariously stacked display of fruit. _Tell you what—why don't you just take a back seat for awhile and let me do all the difficult work, like walking and talking, while you carry on with your little plans._

"You know, I've always fantasized about being dominated by a woman, but I didn't expect it to be like this."

Something snapped in Callisto's mind. The lethal combination of klutziness, cheerfulness, and the never-ending dirty daydreams produced a rage akin to that she felt every time she saw Xena's face. There was a tiny pop, and suddenly Joxer's head was a very, very quiet place.

_Joxer?_

Silence.

Callisto skipped, twirled, and came dangerously close to frolicking in the marketplace. The victory dance subsided as she realized that she was drawing stares from a cluster of women standing around a jeweler's stall. Callisto stared down at Joxer's armor in distaste as it clunked to a halt several moments after she stopped moving. _Did he lose a bet or something? Well, there's no reason I have to dress like Joxer just because I happen to be Joxer._ She ducked into a changing tent outside the clothier's stall.

The dented and ill-fitting armor was off in a flash. _Oh my gods._ Callisto's lip curled at the network of scars and accompanying rainbow of bruises covering Joxer's body like a bad game of connect-the-dots. "Does he think black and blue is a good look for him?"

She clothed him in tight silver-studded leather armor a la Ares, and immediately exploded in derisive laughter. "I look like a dominatrix's wet dream," she chortled. Leering menacingly at herself in the mirror just made her laugh all the harder. Joxer was simply the opposite of sinister. "This will never do."

She changed clothes several more times, eventually settling for a plain cotton tunic and leather trousers. "Well," she reasoned, "if I don't inspire fear, at least I won't attract butch women looking for a whipping boy."

A strong hand seized her by the scruff of Joxer's neck and hauled her out of the tent. Xena glared at her from an arms' length away. "I've been looking all over for you. There's trouble," she added ominously.

Callisto scrambled to come up with a suitably Joxer-esque response. "You think I had something to do with it?"

Xena glowered, leading her through the crowd.

-=-=-

Gabrielle met them outside the tavern, distrust written across her face as she watched Joxer approach. "There's some random guy in there pretending to be you. I think it's Callisto trying to play a trick on us."

Callisto had to struggle not to snigger aloud. She managed to mutter a "You don't say" without choking. Gabrielle led the way into the crowded tavern, where a burly bartender observed them apprehensively.

"So where's this impostor?" Callisto asked as she rested Joxer's elbows on the bar, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice.

The bartender whipped a butter knife out of nowhere and held it to Joxer's throat. "You're the impostor!"

_So that's where the little twerp went._

"Knock it off, Callisto," Gabrielle ordered the bartender. "You're not going to get us that easily."

"I'm not Callisto, I'm Joxer!" the bartender protested. "He's Callisto!" He waved the butter knife menacingly at Joxer's face.

"I can understand why you want to be me," Callisto said as if chewing on a lemon. "I mean, I'm Joxer the Mighty."

"I'm Joxer the Mighty!"

"He's been saying that since we got here," Gabrielle muttered under her breath. "He knows a lot about us, too. I think he might have been stalking Joxer or something."

Xena discreetly had a coughing fit.

Callisto felt Joxer scrutinizing her through the bartender's eyes, making sure she didn't damage his body any more than it would have been damaged anyway in his care. "I look good!" Joxer exclaimed in spite of himself. "What did you do to my armor?"

"I burnt it." Callisto cleared her throat, realizing that she had drawn startled looks from Xena and Gabrielle. "I mean, it was about to fall apart and I couldn't pay anyone to take it away, so I ditched it."

"You did what? I made that armor myself!" the bartender squealed in indignation.

"Yeah, it looked like a bartender made it," Callisto drawled, miming drunkenness.

"Why, I oughta…" The bartender tried to launch himself at Callisto, hands outstretched to strangle Joxer's throat, but he slipped and clunked his head on the bar. A moment later, he popped up again with a flatware caddie in his hands, chucking forks at Callisto's head.

She deftly dodged out of the way of the flying utensils, catching a few to fling back at him with perversely accurate aim.

The bartender roared in a gravelly voice much deeper than the one he previously spoke with. "Stop him from flinging forks at my ass!"

He replied in his original shrill register. "I'm trying!"

Xena turned to stare intensely at her. "Callisto." It was a name. It was an accusation. It was a death warrant.

_What the hell. The cat's out of the bag and has already hacked up a hairball on the floor._ Callisto smirked and waved to Xena.

The bartender's limbs spasmed as he fought for control of his own body. "You are an annoying little shit and I bid you begone!"

"No!" he shrieked hysterically at himself. "You can't force me out! Where am I gonna go?"

Gaining the upper hand, he folded his arms and glared menacingly in the manner of all bartenders when dealing with a particularly difficult patron. "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

Joxer's frustrated howl cut off abruptly as the bartender successfully expelled him from his mind.

Xena, meanwhile, went after Callisto with everything in the bar that wasn't nailed down. Callisto ducked and dodged out of the way, catching whatever she could to throw right back at Xena. Gabrielle managed to trip Callisto with her patched-up staff, sprawling her flat-out on the bar.

Not about to miss his opportunity, the bartender reached under the bar and pulled out a heavily rusted, deeply nicked, and generally nasty-looking sword, which he held at Callisto's throat as Xena pinned her down. "You cause trouble in my bar, you get trouble in my bar. If a blow from this don't kill you, then you'll certainly die from infection afterwards."

"Allow me," Xena said, taking the hilt from the bartender's hand.

Callisto mentally pressed the eject button. Nothing happened. She still looked at the world, specifically the Sword of Tetanus, from Joxer's eyes. _What the fuck?_ She tried again, and again. Horrible realization presented itself with all the force of a fork to the ass. She was stuck.

Xena maneuvered the sword until the tip rested in the hollow of Joxer's throat. "Goodbye, Callisto," she whispered, readying herself to shish kebab her enemy.

Callisto closed Joxer's eyes in resignation. She escaped from Tartarus once, she could do it again.

Xena prepared for the final thrust, but was stopped by Gabrielle's hand on her arm.

"You can't," implored Gabrielle. "If you kill Callisto, Joxer won't have a body to come back to. He'll be doomed to wander the earth as a restless spirit for eternity."

Xena raised an eyebrow. "That might not be a bad thing."

"You've killed her a couple times already. You can kill her again once she's safely out of Joxer's body."

"Against my better judgment," growled Xena, tossing the sword back to the bartender. "But you're coming with us until we find out where the real Joxer's gone."

"Fat chance, bitch." Callisto kneed Xena in the gut, kicking her over onto Gabrielle, and dashed out of the tavern.

Joxer's disembodied consciousness watched helplessly as his body ran off into the night. _What am I going to do now? _he wondered, floating away up into the sky.

A thunderclap resounded in the heavens as a shimmering blue whirlpool appeared above him.


	3. Chapter 3

-=-=-

CHAPTER 3

-=-=-

"I'm trapped. Alone. In a complete dork. This totally sucks."

A gaggle of women followed her full-time now, whispering and giggling amongst themselves whenever she looked their way. Every so often, one would timidly separate from the group to ask for Joxer's autograph, or a hug.

She wanted to kill herself every time she saw her reflection in a puddle of water or shopkeeper's window. The groupies didn't make matters any easier. A little confidence, a little dress sense, and a few flash fighting moves had produced a platoon of female fans big enough to hold their own Olympics. Truth be told, she was kind of flattered, but the thought of spending the rest of eternity trapped in Joxer's body depressed her beyond belief.

Two in particular were especially earnest in their pursuit of the Mighty One. They had been dogging Callisto's heels for a day now, and no amount of melting into crowds or doubling back could shake them. She was about to confront them and offer them any number of signed woodcuts they wanted as long as they went away when they abruptly disappeared.

Callisto spun around, raking the forest with her eyes for any sign of them. Seeing none, she turned to continue on her way and collided with a fist.

She fell hard on the path, blinking furiously to clear the birdies circling her head. Xena's malicious smirk appeared above her, blotting out the sun. "Can I have your autograph?"

Xena and Gabrielle stripped off the cloaks and wigs they had been using to disguise themselves. Callisto ground Joxer's teeth in aggravation for not having seen through the cheap trick earlier.

"Fuck off and die. Wait, let me rephrase that: die, then fuck off." Callisto surged to her feet, delivering a roundhouse kick to Xena's face before being tripped up by Gabrielle's staff. She grabbed the chakram on the way down and frisbeed it at Gabrielle's head, but the target ducked in the nick of time.

Through the trees, she could just make out the narrow mouth of a cave at the base of a sheer rock wall. _If I can make it to the cave, I can take them one at a time instead of both together._

Callisto rolled out from under the deadly arc of Xena's sword and cartwheeled the hundred yards or so to the cave. She flipped them off with a smile and dashed inside.

Xena put out a hand to stop Gabrielle from running after Callisto.

"Aren't we going to follow her?" Gabrielle asked.

"Don't worry," Xena said smugly, "she won't be coming out of there alive."

"But what about Joxer?"

Xena clapped a companionable hand on her friend's shoulder. "We'll just have to hope he finds a body to inhabit that's already schizophrenic."

Callisto wandered deeper into the recess in the rock, looking for a good vantage point from which to ambush Xena and her irritating self-righteous sidekick. If only there was a way to get back to her own body. She shuddered to think what Sovereign had been up to with it.

-=-=-

He bobbed in a light breeze above a terraced outcropping of rock. Below him, a figure jiggled a long wooden pole stuck into the ground and yelled some very nasty things at the sky. Another figure, with long blonde hair, was propped up against a boulder nearby.

_It can't be._ Joxer floated lower for a better look. Her hair has been lovingly brushed and braided, and she sat in front of a flat-topped rock on which were laid out little cups and saucers whittled of wood. Her eyes were open, but completely vacant. Joxer shrugged the shoulders he didn't have and went for it.

Growling in frustration, Sovereign turned away from the wooden key just in time to see Callisto's eyes flutter open. "I was wondering when you'd come back." He loomed over Joxer, an exceptionally vulgar grin plastered across his face. "I tried to make this place a little more homey for you." Sovereign gestured at the crude tea service laid out on the rock.

Joxer stared at the small wooden vase holding a few scraggly wildflowers. "I see." There was a long and painful pause. Joxer got to Callisto's feet, looking at the ugly grey clouds blotting out the horizon. "How do I get out of here?"

Sovereign leered at him. "Why you wanna leave, baby? The party's just getting started." He did a little striptease with his leather vest, absentmindedly rubbing a nipple.

"I think there's been some misunderstanding," Joxer laughed nervously. "I know I'm inside of her body, but I'm not Callisto. I'm Joxer. The Mighty. Maybe you've heard of me?"

"I'm Sovereign. And you're hot." Sovereign grabbed Callisto's body by the waist and pulled it to him. He puckered his lips and went in for the kill.

Joxer pushed him away in disgust. "No! Don't you understand? I'm a man! I like women, you know?"

"Yeah. I like women, too." Sovereign lunged at him. Joxer backed hurriedly away, but slipped on a patch of gravel and sprawled on the ground. He felt Sovereign's weight pressing down on top of him, along with a disturbingly hard object poking into his thigh. "You want it, don't you? I bet you want it bad."

What Joxer wanted more than anything else was to be at the bottom of a cask of very strong ale. He was no match for Sovereign and he knew it. "Okay, but no tongue-kissing."

Lightning struck the key again, re-opening the vortex in the sky. Joxer seized his opportunity—in this case, Sovereign—by the balls, clenching tightly with Callisto's fingernails. Sovereign squealed like a pig, curling protectively into a fetal position around his squashed dignity. Joxer squirmed out from under Sovereign's bulk and made a dash for the edge of the cliff, flinging himself at the vortex.

Sovereign moaned in pain as he watched the vortex drain itself away after sucking Joxer into its swirling depths. "Very disappointed!"

-=-=-

She was fairly far underground and still had no sign of the Warrior Princess & Co. She could hear a soft shuffling noise where two tunnels intersected ahead. She crept stealthily around the corner, coming face to face with—

—herself. A goofy grin threatened to split her head in two.

"Hi!" The sheer boisterousness of the greeting confirmed Callisto's worst fears.

"Joxer," she spat out the name, staring at herself in horror.

In the absence of his helmet, he was wearing an actual colander on her head along with matching cookie sheets strapped to her chest and back by way of armor.

"How… ?"

He shrugged, clanking softly. "Some kind of vortex opened up in the sky that led me to your body, and another one dropped me here."

"Give me back my body," she demanded.

Joxer took a few steps back. "Why? You'll only beat me up and then go kill my friends."

"I promise I won't," Callisto lied.

"You're lying," observed Joxer.

She growled, exasperated, and lunged for him. Joxer danced out of the way, evading a punch.

"You want money?"

He shook her head. Callisto seized a handful of blonde hair, but couldn't bring herself to rip it out. She decided to try a new strategy.

"What about groupies, Joxer? There's a cult of women out there worshipping you right now!" cajoled Callisto. "Don't tell me you don't fantasize about luscious, busty women drooling all over you."

"What do I need them for when I've got… me?" Joxer grinned indecently as his hands slid over Callisto's body.

"Get your hand off my ass!" Callisto shrieked.

"My ass now!" Joxer retorted, giving it a good squeeze.

Callisto screamed and rushed at Joxer, hands outstretched to strangle her own throat. Joxer laughed maniacally and bounded away, licking a finger and swirling it suggestively around the metal studs of her halter top.

Try as she might, Callisto couldn't catch up with Joxer to throttle him out of her body. An idea presented itself. She head-butted the nearest wall.

"Hey, that's my nose!" Joxer exclaimed.

"My nose now!" Callisto laughed. "Give me back my body!"

"No!" Joxer attempted a pole dance with a stalagmite and failed miserably.

Callisto ran into every wall and tripped over every stone in the immediate vicinity. When she was done with that, she punched Joxer's face repeatedly with his own fists. His body bled from cuts on his face and arms, and the throbbing pain in his ankle told Callisto that it was almost certainly broken.

In a last ditch effort to get him to give in, she lowered his head and rammed a nearby boulder. To her surprise, the boulder rolled slightly with the force of her impact, pitching her into a hole that concealed behind it.

Callisto slid down a sharp incline, gaining speed. The tunnel widened, then dropped off entirely. She sailed through the misty air of a huge cavern, watching helplessly as the rocky ground rose up to strike her in the face. _Ow._

She pushed herself to her feet. _Oh, fuck._ The last time she was here was after Xena had so thoughtfully left her to breathe sand after Perdicus's death.

She heard an all too familiar giggle behind her. "Oh, man. I've been waitin' so long for this moment."

"Oh, come on, Strife. It can't have been more than a few days since I killed you."

"That's still far too long ta spend in Tartarus!" he shouted. Calming down, he added, "Dork suits you, by the way. What's your spring collection look like? Salmoneus?"

"Leave me alone," Callisto said, searching for the entrance to the tunnel leading to the surface. "I need to find a way out of here."

Strife cackled and tented his fingers deviously. "The only way I'm gettin' outta here is if I'm in a livin' body."

"So what's that got to do with—aakkk…" Strife cut her off in mid-sentence with a thumb to the Adam's apple.

"Ya know, I really wanna get tha fuck outta here, but I think I want you dead even more." Strife grinned evilly as he commenced beating the shit out of Callisto.

She tried to throw him off, but with limited success. Joxer's already battered body revolted against her at every opportunity. Strife knocked her down and landed on top of her, seizing Joxer's head and repeatedly pounding it into the ground.

Callisto grabbed him by an earring and yanked his head down to her level. "You can't kill me! I'm a goddess, or has death affected your brain?"

"That's what you think. You're not immortal unless tha body you're in is immortal."

"Aw, fukkkk—"

"Stop it!"

Callisto cringed at the approaching clinking of cookie sheets. Strife ceased trying to crack Joxer's skull like an egg as Joxer himself skid to a halt beside him.

Strife looked from Joxer as Callisto to Callisto as Joxer and back again. "I'm not even gonna ask."

"Please don't kill my body," Joxer begged.

"I know you. You've always been a big follower of mine."

Joxer bashfully shuffled Callisto's feet. "Causing mischief is the only thing I'm really good at."

"You forgot bumbling idiocy," Callisto supplied. Suddenly she could feel Strife inside her mind. She felt like she was dangling precariously above a chasm, holding on to safety by a single hand, and Strife was peeling off her fingers one by one. Her grasp began to slip, but instead of falling she found herself floating again, watching as Joxer blinked and sat upright, finally back home in his own body.

Her own form lay slumped on the ground like a used tissue. She drifted down to enter her own body, startled when her eyes fluttered open of their own accord. She tried to slide into her head, but it was as if a brick wall had suddenly built itself around her body.

A smile stretched across her face as her eyes focused on her disembodied spirit, a high-pitched giggle emanating from her vocal cords. "You're shit outta luck, babe."

_No!_

Strife grinned mischeviously as he twirled a strand of hair around her finger. "I always wanted ta be a blonde."

_You fucking bastard!_ Callisto dove for Joxer's head but was stopped by a ball of energy flung from her own traitorous fingertips.

Strife took Joxer by the elbow and steered him towards the way out. "C'mon, Jox. Let's get outta here and find ourselves a tavern. I'm in tha mood ta get down an' dirty an' do stuff I'll regret in tha mornin'. Ya dig?"

_Don't you dare!_

"I'll dig anything you want," Joxer said, enthralled that someone inhabiting a body as attractive as Callisto's wasn't trying to kill him or use him. "So, um, are you seeing anyone?"

_YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME HERE!_


End file.
